`Gidget' Uproar Puts A Chill In Surfing Fantasies

Anyone who has stood in sub-zero misery, pouring boiling water over a frozen lock on the car door knows that you don't live in Chicago for the weather.

No wimps allowed here. We Chicagoans just pull our Bulls caps down over our ears and gut it out until April. Or May. Sometimes June.

And for outdoor ventures, a second Bulls cap is always recommended.Oh yes, we are a brawny bunch. But it doesn't mean we have to like the Chicago climate.

We all have a warm place we dream of escaping to when the snow turns to freezing rain and the frost starts forming on the inside of the windows.

I picture myself frolicking on a pristine beach at Malibu, just another gorgeous woman slinging her waist-length blond hair, living the carefee surfing life.

For many years, my fantasy has deliberately ignored the glaring peculiarities of the people who live in southern California, their obsession with cleavage, celebrity, clothing and the healing power of crystals.

Also, mudslides, raging fires, floods and earthquakes.

But now, word is reaching me of controversy roiling the surfing community. Frankly, it started me wondering if my wintertime escape dream wants to take place in a region where people get in a snit over Gidget.

It started when Fred Reiss, a surfer-writer-comedian (a typical occupation in California) wrote a novel entitled "Gidget Must Die."

The book's main character is a vengeful surfer-serial killer who goes on a rampage, trying to rub out all the characters from the 1959 movie "Gidget."

The book's premise is that the film--starring Sandra Dee in the title role and James Darren as "Moondoggie"--ruined surfing by popularizing the sport and lifestyle, leading to vicious competition and worse.

Some of the biggest names in surfing went ballistic over the book. Lance Carson, 52, one of the all-time American surfing greats, told me angrily, "Gidget is a personal friend of mine."

Gidget turns out to be a real person, and she didn't much fancy the whole concept of Reiss' book either.

"Surfers are supposed to be so laid-back. The idea of them getting upset about a book is pretty unbelievable," says Reiss.

I'll say. I didn't think surfers read books. That was part of their charm.

Later, to my great relief, I learned that the objections of Carson and others were based solely on judging the book by its cover: a guy on a blood-red ocean, surfing and aiming a revolver at the same time.

Writer-surfer Reiss, 41, paid to have the book published himself out of the Santa Cruz'n Surf Shop in Santa Cruz. And he's steamed because some of the country's top surfers have persuaded other surf shops (his main outlets) from carrying the book.

Reiss says this is a violation of the surfers' unwritten code of not caring much about anything. And it certainly doesn't fit into my get-out-of-freezing-Chicago-fantasy where 1st Amendment issues do not intrude in any way.

Calling around to some of the men who actually lived the beach idyll of the "Gidget" movie, I discovered there is a dark underbelly of surfing life today. The "Gidget Must Die" book is not entirely fiction.

"On the water, we've got crowd problems, pollution problems. And, from all the years in the sun, I've had little minor skin cancers," says surfer Carson.

Skip Frye, 54, another legendary surfer of the late '50s and early '60s, has become a clean-water activist.

Most remarkable is that Frye, who owns Harry's Surf Shop in San Diego, now says people ought to get a job so they can fully savor the freedom and glories of surfing in their spare time. "Work's a part of the deal. You got to work to appreciate anything," he says. A surfer preaching the virtues of hard work? Now that's scary.

But I got news for you. And it's even more frightening.

When I confided my California Dreamin' scheme to surfer Steve Pezman, publisher of a surfing magazine, he had a suspiciously wicked edge to his laugh.

Pezman, 54, says it is quite possible to surf the Great Lakes. Even in Winter. And with the growing, rowdy crowds fighting to ride the waves out west, Illinois is looking better and better to the California surfers.